6/13: I still don’t like Guided Tours and Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey is one of Londons oldest and most respected churches, with lots of respected artists, authors, and scientists buried within the grounds and on display to the public. While it felt a little wierd to walk over the plaques (and tombs) of those that are dead, it was still very exciting to see so many respected people that I recognized. Except that our tour guide kept walking past the people I found interesting and talking for extended periods about tombs that I didn’t really care about, which is one of my biggest flaws with guided tours in general. Disregarding that aspect, there were a couple people whose plaques I found to be very cool. William Shakespeare’s was a cool little statue with Shakespeare doing a sassy little pose on top of a head, that I felt was very in character with his real-life whimsy. He is not actually buried at the Abbey, as he is in Stratford-Upon-Avon, but his recognition was cool to see in Poet’s Corner. The Bronte sisters and Jane Austin also had plaques in Poet’s Corner, but their plaques were just tiles with their names, birth dates, and death dates, which I found to be disrespectful. Seeing Stephen Hawkins memorial and where he was buried was also super cool, as I am a huge fan of his work and the movie The Theory of Everything, but I did not see it on our first go around and had to circle back to see it. His memorial having a ‘milky way’-like black hole on it was super cool and it made his memorial seem more than just another tile. One new person that I did not know before entering, and who I learned about from actually listening to our tour guide, was David Livingstone, a British missionary who traveled to Africa and stayed there. The British had sent someone to find him, because they thought he was lost, and the famous quote “Doctor Livingstone, I presume” was uttered by those who found him, one of the few British people living in Africa at the time. I think it’s absolutely insane, that after telling the British that he would rather stay in Africa, Livingstone died and the British took his body back to London. They did “leave his heart” in Africa but If I were his ghost, I would be absolutely infuriated at that happening. I would haunt the hell out of the Abbey for the rest of time, but maybe that’s just me. There were a ton of other really cool tombs there, but these few really stuck out to me.